By Khalida Sarwari
A packed field of eight is fighting for three open seats on the Cupertino City Council this fall in a contest that could potentially bring about a major shuffle on the council with the departure of termed out Councilman Barry Chang.
The Nov. 6 election will also see six contenders with backgrounds in tech, politics and community volunteering challenge Mayor Darcy Paul and Councilwoman Savita Vaidhyanathan in their bid for re-election.
Whoever is elected will be tasked with overseeing the development of the defunct Vallco Shopping Mall and restructuring of the city’s outdated business tax which would levy to the tune of $10 million from Apple, the city’s largest employer.
Liang-Fang Chao
Liang-Fang Chao, 54, maintains that annual trips to her native Taiwan and her husband’s homeland of China have allowed her to observe what makes a livable city. But she sees Cupertino, where she’s lived for the last 20 years, at a “critical crossroads,” burdened by poor planning, environmental and traffic problems and loss of retail.
“Residents value Cupertino’s character and diversity, but unbalanced growth impacts our quality of life,” she said. “I wish to fight for a healthy and livable Cupertino.”
Chao supports strengthening the city’s development standards, involving residents in the city’s decision-making process and incentivizing the work-study program. She’d also like to boost the city’s shopping scene.
Before heading an education enrichment and technology startup, she worked in the computer software and hardware industry for 18 years. She’s also a Cupertino Union School District board member. She is married to William Cao, an inventor, and has two high school-aged sons.
Tim Gorsulowsky
Tim Gorsulowsky hails from neighboring Saratoga, where he lived for 20 years before moving to Cupertino’s Shadowhill Lane neighborhood two years ago, around the same time he lost his wife of 24 years, Annette.
The 57-year-old safety and security consultant and business owner identifies as a Republican. He says if elected, he’d prioritize public safety, promote career technical education in schools, make the city more accessible for the disabled and support small businesses while also making a push to attract Fortune 500 companies.
“The new infusion of monies will increase our tax base, while keeping us at a moderate level for promoting new business to enter our community,” he said.
This would be Gorsulowsky’s first foray into public service, though he says he’s always had an affinity for helping people.
Orrin Mahoney
Orrin Mahoney is practically a household name in Cupertino — a city he’s called home for nearly 50 years — after serving two terms on the City Council, including a stint as mayor in 2008. Not to mention, he spent 25 of his 35 years with Hewlett-Packard at the company’s Cupertino site.
He’s aiming for a three-peat on the council to build on the work he started years ago and points to improvements that were made under his watch to the city’s trail and recreational facilities as one example of his proven performance.
“Many shopping centers were modernized and a thriving community gathering place was established with the Main Street project,” the 73-year-old said. “Finally, the Apple Park campus was approved, providing for Cupertino’s long-term economic security with direct and indirect fiscal benefits.”
This time around, he says he wants to focus on housing prices that are driving entire sectors away, traffic and economic sustainability.
Before retiring in 2002, Mahoney held management positions in research and development, manufacturing, information technology and marketing at HP. He is married to Carolyn Krizek-Mahoney, an accountant. They have four children and four grandchildren.
Darcy Paul
Paul is seeking re-election to build on the success of his first term on the council and he’s counting on his intelligence and experience to help him return to the dais. Instead of specific targets or projects, he says his priorities are based more in approach.
“For me, identifying particular wants is not as constructive as thinking about, for instance, how we continue the effort to resolve the concept of tyranny of the majority by building a more functional and democratic system where the point is found more in the dialog and the listening than it is in the binary nature of on-off switch-style results,” he said.
When pressed, however, he identified as his three top priorities the expansion of the library and park space as well as public transit improvements “so that we can re-take the mantle of innovation in this space rather than playing catch-up to old technologies.”
Paul was born in Columbia, Missouri and raised in Overland Park, Kansas before moving more than a dozen years ago to Cupertino, where he lives with his wife, Sharon Lee, a corporate banker, and their two daughters, 3 and 6 years old.
Tara Shreekrishnan
Tara Shreekrishnan, 25, is the fresh-faced candidate in the bunch who was inspired to enter public service by her mother, a public school librarian and community volunteer. Shreekrishnan works as an aide for Berkeley Councilwoman Kate Harrison.
“I want to use my experience in city government to usher in a new council that is less focused on cutting ribbons and instead dedicated to making difficult decisions that benefit ordinary citizens, rather than developers or big tech companies,” she said.
Still a political novice, Shreekrishnan already has a long list of ideas ready to deploy. To cut traffic congestion, for example, she wants to implement parent carpooling programs at schools, car-share options and a free citywide shuttle. Residents can also expect her to hold developers to higher standards and demand corporate accountability from Apple.
Shreekrishnan is also promising to personally organize more neighborhood watch meetings to make the city safer. She says if elected she’d fight for the people for whom the city has become untenable and those whose quality of life suffers from traffic and skyrocketing housing costs, and that includes herself because she wants to stay and raise a family in Cupertino someday.
Savita Vaidhyanathan
Vaidhyanathan is seeking re-election to see the work she started on affordable housing and regional transportation come to fruition, issues that along with the environment constitute her biggest priorities. Prior to running for her first term on the council, the 54-year-old was a community volunteer.
“I recognized early that traffic and pollution don’t respect city boundaries and demand regional solutions so I initiated conversations with leaders in neighboring cities on matters that affect our region,” she said.
She takes pride in her work with nonprofits to make a senior housing project feasible and her role in initiating programs like RYDE, a curb-to-curb transportation for seniors. She was also involved in launching POGO, a carpool app for students, and encouraging youth and in particular girls’ involvement in local government.
Vaidhyanathan was raised in India but has called Cupertino home for the last 23 years, where she resides with her husband, R. “Doc” Vaidhyanathan, who works in tech. They have one daughter.
Hung Wei
A self-proclaimed “professional volunteer,” 62-year-old Hung Wei would bring 11 years of public service experience to the council from serving on the Fremont Union High School District Board of Trustees.
“With my eleven years of high school board service, and years of local non-profit board volunteer experiences, I have proven myself to be an open-minded listener, who studies issues thoroughly, and makes decisions according to logic and facts,” she said.
Wei has lived near Kennedy Middle School since 1990 but grew up in Taipei, Taiwan where her husband, Ta-Wei Chien, currently works in the Internet TV industry. They have two adult sons.
Jon Willey
Jon Willey, 60, is running because he feels dissatisfied with the current council. As a leader of Better Cupertino, a local group that has tended to be anti-development, he doesn’t feel adequately represented by his elected officials. Cupertino schools are too crowded and traffic is a big problem, he says. He also sees an imbalance between housing and high-density projects.
“If I’m elected to the City Council, every decision that I make, every vote that I will cast, will be the will of the majority,” he vowed. “That is the responsibility of each councilman and that is democracy.”
The longtime Applied Materials engineer said he’d be a “data driven” council member who would request detailed analyses for all large development projects.
Raised in San Jose, Willey has lived the last 21 years of his life in Rancho Riconada and is married to a secretary in the Franklin-McKinley School District. They have three children ages 11, 5 and 2.
Crowded field of Cupertino City Council candidates vie for three seats
